Things That Were, Things That Are
by Sigridhr
Summary: Terrible things happened to witches and wizards who travelled in time. After Harry falls, Hermione travels back in time to set things right. AU for book seven


**Warnings: **AU, Character Death, Dub-Con

**Notes: **Written for Angel Queen on AO3 for the rarepair fic exchange.

* * *

Terrible things happened to witches and wizards who travelled in time.

Dumbledore had known it would come to this – he'd left the time turner to her deliberately. They weren't supposed to take you back more than a few hours, but Hermione – Hermione was clever. It was impossibly clever – but there was no one left to tell her so.

Harry was dead. It was as impossible as the prospect of travelling back. But he _was_ dead, and Dumbledore _had_ left the time turner to her, and... this wasn't how things were meant to be.

Closing her eyes, and casting the spell that would send her back not hours, but _years_, Hermione began to spin the hourglass.

Outside, the Dark Mark burned a foul green over the towers of Hogwarts.

…

Dumbledore, looking much younger, and much, much more alive, looked momentarily taken aback when she tumbled out of nowhere and onto his office floor.

He recovered remarkably quickly.

"Sweet?" he asked, nudging the bowl towards the edge of the desk and she scrambled to her feet.

She stared at him for a very long moment, unable to move. She hadn't expected the sight of him – living, breathing, _alive_ – to hit her quite as hard as it did. He just waited, eyes twinkling, white beard tucked into his belt. But there was unbridled curiosity, and wariness in his gaze.

"No, thank you," she replied, belated. "What year is it?"

Dumbledore's eyes narrowed slightly, and she had the feeling that the pieces were falling together in his brain at an alarming rate. "1977, my dear," he replied, mildly. "Would I be correct in assuming that you are _not_ from this year?"

"Yes," Hermione said.

"Remarkable," Dumbledore intoned, leaning back in his seat. "And your name, Miss...?"

"Granger, sir," she said. "Hermione Granger."

"Well, Miss Granger," Dumbledore replied, his eyes twinkling. "I suppose you are here on a mission of tremendously grave importance."

"Yes," she said, hesitantly. "You sent me... at least, I think you did? You left me a time turner at any right."

"Did I?" Dumbledore said, absently, shuffling papers around on his desk as if searching for something.

There was a long, awkward pause as Dumbledore pried off a toffee that had been stuck the surface of his desk. He examined it for a moment, and then gave a half-shrug and popped it in his mouth.

"Is there anything you _need_, Miss Granger?" he asked, his eyes grave over his half-moon spectacles as he leaned forward to stare at her.

"A bed, for tonight," she said. "And a house-elf, if I could borrow one?"

His eyebrows shot up at that, but he merely nodded and ushered her out of the office with a "you are a Gryffindor, I believe? The password is 'lion's mane', my dear."

…

She was woken in the middle of the night by a house elf, who frantically introduced himself as 'Blinky'. She was dragged, blinking and dishevelled, downstairs to the common room, where Dumbledore was waiting for her.

Lily Evans was dead.

"It would appear, Miss Granger, that you have been followed."

…

She didn't remember the hours that followed, except that they were cold and empty, because the world she was in was worse than the one she had come from. This was a world where Harry never _was_. Where she fought the troll alone in her first year, if she fought it at all.

Perhaps it was a world where she never made it to Hogwarts, because her kind would not be welcome here under Voldemort's regime.

…

Dumbledore dragged her to the park where Lily Evans, who had been walking home, had been murdered. The Dark Mark burned grimly in the sky, casting a sickly, pale light on their faces. Dumbledore looked hollow – old again, like she remembered him.

"I need to know what is coming, Miss Granger," he said, gravely.

Nothing. Lily Evans was dead. Harry never existed. There was nothing coming.

"Voldemort," she replied. "He can't be stopped now. I've destroyed everything. I'd thought – I'd been so _clever_..."

"And Miss Evans was to have played a vital part in what you were trying to accomplish?" he asked, sharply.

Hermione's throat closed, as she blinked back tears. "Yes," she said.

"Then our next course of action is clear."

He bent down, and to Hermione's great surprise, shaved Lily's head, and placed the hair carefully in a leather bag, dropping one strand of it in a potion she recognised immediately.

"If you have indeed been sent back, by me, for a purpose," he said, "then that purpose is now clear."

It wasn't to her, but she drank the potion anyway.

…

She had red hair. It was straight, which she wasn't used to.

She also had a sister.

She hated Petunia for what she'd done – what she would do – to Harry.

But Harry never existed.

"How much longer will you be in the loo?" Petunia shouted through the door. "I thought you freaks could do everything instantly?"

…

She found the cave, where Tom Riddle had terrified his classmates.

It terrified Blinky, but she forced them to go on. Blinky screamed and cried as he drank the poison, and she had to force it down his throat.

And she screamed and cried too, even long after they'd scrambled back, inferi on their heels and the locket in her hand.

One down, five to go.

…

She found Peter Pettigrew shortly after.

It was exactly forty days after he'd killed Lily Evans for the second time. Forty days after she'd stood over the body of her best friend's mother, and stolen her identity. Forty days since Hermione Granger had ceased to exist.

Pettigrew pleaded for mercy, and she was disturbed to find she didn't have any left.

...

School started in September.

She got her Head Girl badge, and she laughed and laughed until she was almost sick. It had been all she'd ever wanted once. Now she just wanted to go home.

James Potter brushed past her in the hallway, his shoulder rubbing against hers, and her heart actually stopped because he looked so very much like Harry. He gave her an odd look, and a gentle nudge on the shoulder.

"All right, Evans? Had a good summer?"

Lily Evans was dead. Harry was dead.

James Potter smelt like spearmint and fresh-cut grass.

…

Slipping into the boy's dormitories was surprisingly easy. Apparently the founders were only concerned about boys in the girl's dorms, and never considered the reverse.

She'd've found it funnier if she wasn't paranoid one of them would wake up as she creeped about their room. As quickly and quietly as she could she sent off four quick 'stupefy' spells.

Peter Pettigrew was curled up, not unlike a rat, in a nest of blankets on the bed closest to the wall. Without even really thinking about it, she found herself standing by his bed.

He was pale, portly, and horribly, horribly young. He had one of those boyish faces, making him look more like he was fourteen than seventeen.

She thought of the adult Peter begging for mercy at her feet, and of Lily Evans, spread-eagled and lifeless on the ground.

She thought about smothering him.

But no matter how much she couldn't get those images out of her mind, how much she _knew_ that this _boy_ would cause the deaths of all the other people in this room – _his friends_, she couldn't do it.

Because _this_ Peter had not done those things.

She wondered which one, of the two of them, was the monster.

She turned, going through James Potter's suitcase, spilling his things carelessly onto the floor until she found what she was looking for.

She took the Marauder's Map, and, after a moment's hesitation, the invisibility cloak.

She packed everything back away.

...

She saw Peter Pettigrew again the next morning at breakfast, looking young, happy and loved, ducking the wildly flying elbows of Sirius Black, who gesticulated animatedly while he talked, and James laughed so hard he choked on a sticky bun.

She hated him. Her fingers clenched so tightly around her knife she had fingernail imprints on her palm the rest of the day.

James caught the look on her face and did a double-take, frowning at her in concern.

She gathered her things and walked out of the hall, breaking into a run as soon as she'd passed through the doors.

...

She had been here two and a half months.

She had crawled into the empty space that Lily Evans left behind, and no one had noticed.

She began to forget Hermione Granger.

…

Harry's description of the ring and the memories from the pensieve were more than enough information for Hermione to track down the old Gaunt residence.

Slipping out, with the invisibility cloak and the Marauder's map was simple enough. She found the ring under the floorboards.

She put it with the locket in the bottom of her trunk, and tried very, very hard to shake off the eerie feeling they were whispering to each other in the night.

She didn't feel like herself anymore.

...

"Something has changed about you, Evans," James said, sneaking up behind her in the library and slinging an arm over her shoulder. She shrugged it off, moving to balance on the farthest edge of the chair away from him.

He watched her carefully, leaning forward on his elbows.

"Your handwriting's different," he said.

"People change," she replied.

He stared at her for a very, very long moment, and she felt her stomach churn as she wondered whether he _knew_. She wasn't sure whether she wanted him to or not.

"So they do," he replied. He gathered his things and stood, throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder.

"Oh, Evans?" he asked, just as he was leaving. "Come to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?"

_Say no, say no, say no, say no,_ she told herself.

"Sure," she said. He grinned, and she groaned, letting her head fall down on the desk with a loud 'thunk'.

"I am so screwed," she said, aloud.

…

She brewed more Polyjuice potion in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

She had pretend conversations with Ron and Harry until she couldn't speak through the tears.

Even Myrtle wouldn't speak to her after that.  
…

"Horcruxes," she said.

It was the first time she'd actually said the word aloud since she'd arrived, though it had pretty much been her only thought. Dumbledore looked as ill as she felt, and that frightened her more than anything.

"How many?" he asked, looking pale and, for the first time she'd ever seen it, frightened.

"He planned to make seven," she replied. "I have two – though I haven't yet figured out how to destroy them. I know where some of the others are."

Dumbledore looked astonished. "You have two Horcruxes here, at _Hogwarts_?" He scowled, and stood up, looking furious. "You should have come to me at once. Bring them here."

"Whatever you're planning," she said, "to destroy them, it'll kill you. I've seen it before."

"Better I than your dorm-mates, Miss Granger," he replied sharply. "I expected better from you."

"I'm _trying_," she pleaded.

…

Hogsmeade was almost the exactly the same now as it was the first time she'd gone.

James bought her butterbeer, she kept an awkward two foot distance between the two of them no matter how hard he tried to close the gap.

He kept asking her questions, 'do you remember that time in fifth year...?'

She began to think James Potter was not nearly so stupid as he looked, and that she was getting careless.

That evening she locked herself in her room, and refused to come out for dinner.

…

Dumbledore dropped a pensieve down on the desk before her.

"Show me what you know," he said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

Once she started pulling the memories from her mind and dropping them into the bowl, she found she couldn't stop. She showed him the philosopher's stone from first year, the triwizard tournament, Harry dragging back Cedric's corpse, the locket, the cup, the frantic search for the diadem at the end, his own funeral, Sirius' death, Harry, always Harry, Harry with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Harry with Lily's eyes... Harry's death. Always, everything circled back to death.

She was crying, and her tears dripped into the opaque film of memory in the bowl, and the memories seemed to scatter, like ants, swirling in agitation.

Dumbledore dismissed her wordlessly, and didn't ask her back at all that month.

…

"You've been avoiding me," James said, sneaking up behind her in the hallway as she headed back to the dorms after class.

"I haven't," she said, just a little too quickly. "I'm just busy."

"Look, Evans," he said, reaching out and grabbing her arm, pulling her to a stop. "I know there's something wrong. You're... different – withdrawn. I just wanted to say, I know we haven't always got along, but if you ever, ever need anything, I've always considered you a friend, and I'll be there – day or night."

She stood, rigidly still, and he sighed in exasperation, running a hand through his unruly hair in a gesture that made him look impossibly even_more_ like Harry.

"I have to go," she blurted out, pulling her arm out of his grasp and scurrying down the hall.

"Evans, _Lily!_" he shouted, following. "What is going _on_ with you? Please, whatever it is, let me help you."

"You can't," she replied. "Really. Stay out of it, please."

"Lily..." He ran a hand down her arm, grabbing her hand in his. "_Merlin_," he cursed, looking a bit wide-eyed and frightened. "You're shaking."

She wasn't sure precisely what came over her at that moment, but he was so _warm_, and so _familiar_ – so very, very like Harry, but _not_ in so many ways that mattered – and she just didn't want to be alone anymore, and James, well, James was the only person who had come close to actually seeing _her_ underneath the skin of Lily Evans.

So she kissed him, so hard their teeth clacked together with the force of it, and he bag and schoolbooks tumbled to the floor as she wrapped her arms around his neck and just pulled him in as close as she could.

As soon as he got over the surprise, he was pressing back, walking them both back until she was pinned between him and the wall, and she lifted her leg instinctually, wrapping it around his waist. They fit together seamlessly, with none of the usual awkward bent-kneed stooping.

It was fucking perfect. And for the first time since she'd arrived, since she'd left Hermione Granger behind, she felt _alive_.

…

She stayed at Hogwarts for the holidays, unable to bring herself to stay with the family who didn't even know their daughter was dead.

A week after most of the students – including James – had gone, Dumbledore called her up to his office, and he dropped Helga Hufflepuff's cup on the desk between them.

"How did you get it?" she asked, breathlessly.

"Gringotts holds many secrets," he replied. "But so do I."

…

The first day of term, James pulled her aside between Potions class and Transfiguration, and fucked her in the room of requirement.

Then he handed her a Christmas present.

She hadn't bought him one, but he just laughed and said it didn't matter.

They were late to class.

…

"We should get married," James said, one evening after Easter break, when the sweat as still cooling on the sheets.

"No we shouldn't," she replied, curling away from him.

"I'm serious," he said, sitting up. "I love you, Lily."

...

In the end, it was Binky who brought the diary. Well, Binky who convinced Dobby to bring it.

Hermione introduced herself to Dobby, and then broke down and hugged him, much to his complete astonishment.

He patted her on the back awkwardly, before dismissing himself.

She was never told, but Lucius Malfoy had Dobby killed five months later.

…

On the last day of term she brought them all into the room of requirement retrieved the diadem, and set them in a bowl: the ring, the locket, the diary, the diadem and the cup.

She stared down at them for a long moment – pieces of Tom Riddle. Tiny little things holding so much hatred.

She burnt them all the fiendfyre.

…

"We should get married," James said again, later that day as she was packing.

"How did you even get in here?" she asked. "The staircase is enchanted."

He gave her a long, flat look. "Can we stay on-topic?"

"No," she said. "I don't like the topic."

"Why won't you consider it?" he asked. "Why do you always get so angry when I bring it up? Why not? Why shouldn't we?"

In a horrible, twisted way the pieces fell into place.

Why shouldn't they? Because this is what happened. Lily Evans married James Potter.

She was at a crossroads; she didn't know which way to turn.

…

They were married that summer, and had joined the Order of the Phoenix by that fall.

Dumbledore came to the wedding, and asked her if she knew what she was doing.

She said yes, but she meant no.

…

And then, the inevitable happened.

She was pregnant.

Everything had spun so far out of control. She was living a lie that she couldn't keep up. Everything had changed, and yet _nothing_ had changed.

…

She had a son. They named him Harry James.

...

And then the house was a flurry of talks about secret keepers, and prophecy, and Voldemort.

Sirius stumbled into their kitchen late one night, begging James to take Peter as the secret keeper.

"No one will suspect him – they'll be looking for me, mate," Sirius said. "It's safer."

Hermione held Harry close to her chest, and thought of her friend – _just a boy_ – dragging Cedric Diggory's lifeless body out of the maze. She thought of him lying dead at seventeen.

She thought of things Harry had said – 'my mum's love protected me'. She thought of Voldemort, scattered, kept alive only by his horcruxes.

They were all gone now.

She closed her eyes and pressed her nose to his head, feeling the warmth of his skin and the soft smell of his hair.

"I think we should go with Peter," she said.

…

She didn't sleep on the night of October 30th. She just brought Harry into their bed, and held him.

She and James were dead less than twenty-four hours after that.

So was Voldemort.

…

But Harry lived.

And things trundled on as they had done. Only, in this world, Harry's eyes were brown.


End file.
